Mr. Insomnia

One of the first things I read coming home this evening was this. Don’t get me wrong, I can see why these findings are legit. I will also tell you as a mild-to-moderate insomniac I use Civilization IV to fall asleep at night a lot, sometimes to wake up only three or four hours later to turn off the computer and pass out again. But it is that initial falling-asleep that I find really hard, and because the game lags so much on my (ahem) dated iBook G4, it’s a surefire hit for conquering Dreamland. A few nights running now I’ve slept away from my laptop and not been able to fall directly asleep (although drug use probably factors into at least one of the nights) and it might be because I couldn’t play my precious Civ IV, or it could be because I have been sleeping in beds with other people: the chances of being uncomfortable while sharing a bed, I’ve found, skyrocket with the increasing number of people in it.

So now that I’m in my 20s, technically, I guess I count as an “adult.” Nevertheless, the bit that really got me was about how a member of the Sleep Council are fixated on the fact that kids “need to wake up to the fact that to feel well…they need to do something about their sleep.” Well look, guy, why don’t you try to get into college or something? These doctors keep bitching about how modern man needs to get his beauty sleep, but isn’t this just treating the symptoms rather than the causes? I don’t know guys. I think if I wanted to get more sleep I would have to sacrifice some of my success quotient.

Look at this summer, for instance. I sleep all the fucking time and I don’t do a thing except play Civilization IV and eat and play my mandolin on the porch and ride my bike around and get drunk. When I actually have things to do – like school, work, or other things – I don’t sleep. Because I want to get my things done, and I want to get them done on time because I have deadlines. Modern man has deadlines, so he doesn’t sleep. The most excellent among his kind also don’t sleep because he is fucking stressed out about everything all the time. Maybe we are not exactly going to be stabbed or beaten to death every day, but as far as I can see, if you screw up, it takes a lot of work to unscrew it.

Funny thing is, I think that probably a lot of these Sleep Council guys don’t sleep much themselves. They, I get the feeling, probably will tell you the same things I would tell them about my sleep habits: if I wanted to sleep more, I would have to stop trying to get ahead or rethink my expectations of what I want out of my life.